ARTICLES ABOUT KENNETH STARR BY DATE - PAGE 4

"Enough is enough" apparently doesn't work for Kenneth Starr. The latest report of his considered indictment of a sitting president is "more" than enough. Any thoughts of Starr being an "independent" prosecutor can no longer be considered (if it ever was). His hounding of the president after he submitted his report recommending impeachment plus his reindictment of Webster Hubbell, indictment of Susan McDougal, and others is the stuff witch hunts and inquisitions are made of. Americans must ask themselves, "How much harm has the president done to this country compared to the harm Kenneth Starr & Company have done to our legal system?"

Heading into three critical days of questioning, House prosecutors on Sunday spelled out some lines of inquiry they will pursue with Monica Lewinsky and two other witnesses, even as senators stepped up their search for some bipartisan way to bring the trial of President Clinton to a conclusion. The preparations came as the Senate enters what could well be the last phase of the impeachment proceedings against Clinton, who was charged by the House in December on two articles, perjury and obstruction of justice.

A federal judge issued an unusual gag order on Friday preventing lawyers for Julie Hiatt Steele, a bit player in the White House sex and perjury scandal, from making public the information they receive from independent counsel Kenneth Starr's office while defending Steele on obstruction of justice charges. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton granted the "protective order" over the objections of Steele's attorneys and a group of media organizations after Jay Apperson, an associate independent counsel, warned that premature disclosure could "jeopardize an ongoing investigation."

Kenneth Starr intervened in the Senate trial of President Clinton in a characteristic way. He acted in secret. He went to the judge ex parte: without notifying the other side, the president's side, or giving it a chance to oppose his motion. Starr persuaded the judge to issue an order requiring Monica Lewinsky to appear for questioning by the House Republican prosecutors of the president. But he inadvertently did something else. He illuminated the profoundly anti-constitutional basis of his position, and therefore of this impeachment process.

-- Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel whose investigation led to President Clinton's impeachment trial, sought an emergency court order on Friday to compel Monica Lewinsky to submit to interviews by House prosecutors during the weekend. Starr sought the order at the request of Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the lead prosecutor, after Lewinsky refused to meet with the House managers last week. Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson of U.S. District Court was still considering the request late Friday evening, said Paul McNulty, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee.

Were the House Republican prosecutors talking about the president or about a mafia don? Their language was sometimes so extreme -- conspiracy, infamy -- that it was hard to tell. The very shrillness of the attack signaled the dual nature of this impeachment trial. It has the trappings of a trial: a great and solemn one, as the commentators keep saying. But it is also the culmination of years of political effort by a passionate minority to destroy this president. Consider how we got to where we are. At every stage the hand of the extreme right is evident.

In his speech to the House uzging impeachment of the president, Henry Hyde said that our safety depends on respect for the law. "The rule of law," he said, "protects you and it protects me from the 3 a.m. knock on our door. It challenges abuse of authority. It's a shame Darkness at Noon is forgotten." But the knock on the door is here. Abuse of legal authority is occurring in the very process that Hyde and his colleagues are so zealously pressing. On the day that the Senate began its trial of President Clinton, Kenneth Starr had a grand jury indict Julie Hiatt Steele.

Perjury and obstruction of justice are the two charges that will go to the Senate. Whether the president actually lied or not might be questionable, but he went to great lengths to mislead and give out false information regarding his sexual activities. But is there anyone caught in that predicament who would not have done the same? The president's sexual affairs were poor judgment and a nasty treatment of his family, but I don't understand how Kenneth Starr had any business snooping into the president's sexual affairs.

Vannie Mae Starr, the mother of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, will be buried today in east Texas. Mrs. Starr, 91, died on Sunday within a week of learning that her son and President Clinton would share the cover of Time magazine as its Men of the Year. Her body was discovered by her housekeeper in the tiny white home where she had raised Kenneth and two other children, a family member said. She died of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office.

Should Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg and Kenneth Starr decide who is to be president of the United States? When you analyze the principal argument made for the impeachment of President Clinton, you are brought inevitably to that question. Perjury was the House Republican mantra, the argument pressed by the hard right to bring moderates to heel. In the debate, one Republican after another said he or she had to vote to impeach Bill Clinton because he lied under oath. But that proposition overlooks what the trio did. The president tried to keep his sexual improprieties secret.